The blackout cometh

There are various strategies we will select from to confront the looming ecological disaster. Which one is yours?

by Michael Nenonen <mnenonen@republic-news.org>

A few days ago I learned that someone I dearly love has a terminal condition. This will almost certainly be her last summer. Since the news, sorrow and disorientation have subtly altered my state of consciousness. Strange thoughts are coming to me now. Take them for what they’re worth; if they aren’t worth much, then I hope you’ll forgive me for sharing them with you.

It occurs to me that we spend much of our time in a waking dream, a dream of a world in which all things can be understood and at least partially controlled. Here, every location can be mapped, every phenomenon named, every circumstance predicted, analyzed, and evaluated. It's a thoroughly human place, a place where human concerns are the only concerns, where nature and flesh exist only as resources for human projects. This is the city of sanity, the vast and complicated metropolis of the well-ordered mind. It seems solid enough; in fact, it seems made of adamant--until a blackout plunges it into darkness.

During a blackout the city vanishes along with its lights, and we find ourselves suspended above an abyss that defies all measurement and language, all reason, all judgment. This, we realize, this inscrutable nothingness, this terrible glory, this alone is real. The abyss is the unending field of possibility from which all things arise and into which they must certainly fall. If the abyss is like the sea, then metropolis is like the froth upon a single wave. The blackout reveals the illusory nature of the city in the same way that a crack in a mirror reveals the illusory nature of a reflected image.

Blackouts are brought about in many ways. Grievous traumas and illnesses, whether of the body or the mind, are typical culprits, as are aesthetic revelations and the ecstasies of dance and drugs, sex and prayer. Grief, such as the grief I’m feeling tonight, is perhaps the most common cause; it's certainly the most inevitable one.

Blackout-inducing grief can be collective as well as personal. During the Vietnam War, many Americans lost their faith in the myth of America, a faith that had previously given them a sense of safety and moral purpose. Perhaps that era's much-maligned counterculture was, in part, the expression of a collective anguish, the heaving gasp of a people suddenly bereft of their nationalist fairy-tales.

Our blackouts are sometimes permanent. If the suffering that triggered the blackout is too great, if the injury cannot be healed, the city of sanity may never again coalesce. There are mentally ill people who will remain forever in the abyss; there are societies that have undergone such catastrophic collapse that their members may tumble through fathomless shadow forevermore. I wonder if our global community, rapidly descending as it is into apocalyptic ecological, economic, and military chaos, may not soon know the shattering grandeur of eternal night.

Usually, though, the blackout is only a passing thing. The lights eventually come on, the buildings erect themselves, and the streets fill with pavement. Those who've survived the dark night of the soul then have to come to terms with their experience. It seems to me that there are four general strategies for doing this.

Amnesia is the first and most usual popular strategy. In the resurgent busyness of the mind, most people forget the city's temporary dissolution. They may vaguely recall seeing something significant in their darkness, but, if they care to dwell upon that memory at all, it's only to try and incorporate it into the metropolis according to their ideological preferences. They may remember the blackout as a vision of heaven or of hell, a transitory madness or a passing epiphany. Regardless of the concepts used, they only distract attention from the experience itself. The Tao that can be spoken of isn’t really the Tao. In any case, having concealed the infinite beneath their tawdry labels, they go about their work and their leisure, comfortably nestled in their fantasies of security.

This approach sacrifices clarity for peace of mind, and all too often kills the capacity for genuine compassion for those who are lost in the night. I’ve met amnesiacs, for example, who’ve told me that the homeless can save themselves through positive thinking, and amnesiacs who, because they’re incapable of confronting the grim colonial logic of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, have tried to persuade me that if the warring parties could only forgive one another’s transgressions there would finally be peace in the Holy Land. Amnesia breeds naivete, and naivete, in turn, breeds both foolishness and cruelty. By obscuring the precariousness of our situation, it can also lead us into great danger. One of the reasons the First World War happened was because so few Europeans really believed such a monstrous slaughter was possible, or comprehended the miseries it could unleash. Similarly, few people in either Europe or the Americas truly understood the dangers of European fascism until it was far, far too late.

The second strategy for dealing with the aftermath of a blackout is to intensify one’s attachment to the illusion. Some people are so frightened by blackouts that they frantically try to fortify the metropolis. Much of the conservative backlash against the counterculture of the late 60s and early 70s can be understood in this way. This backlash--this "culture war"--is following the lunatic path of all obsessions. Obsession leads to excess, and excesses threaten the imaginary world they’re designed to protect. We can see this in the economic consequences of unrestrained US militarism, in the collapsing domestic support for the Iraq War, and in the increasing use of the word "fascism" in analyses of the politics of American fundamentalism. The more intensely we rely upon illusions, the less sustainable they become.

The third strategy is addiction to the abyss. The destruction of the city may be so intoxicating, and the macabre beauties revealed in the darkness so exquisite, that we yearn for blackouts, and do whatever we can to extinguish the light. Thrill-seekers, hard drug users, and warmongers are among those who walk this ultimately self-destructive path.

A small minority follow the fourth and final strategy, rejecting amnesia, attachment, and addiction in favour of ambivalence. They try to maintain a paradoxical state of mind, a way of being that lets them participate in the city while simultaneously perceiving the abyss through the metropolitan façade. This, I believe, is the only path that leads to ethical and psychological maturity. It avoids the naivete of amnesia, the fanaticism of attachment, and the annihilation of addiction. It encourages the cultivation of reason and virtue while acknowledging their ultimate inadequacy. It celebrates humanity without denying how tiny and transient humanity will always be. It respects the darkness without worshipping the abyss.

I’m putting my faith in the fourth strategy, though I honestly don’t know if I have either the wisdom or the courage it requires. Well, enough. I possess neither the intellect nor the eloquence this subject deserves. It’s time to stop writing and turn off the light.

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